And yet, there’s a last-frontier allure to Antarctica that’s only enhanced by very clear evidence that global warming is melting it. (On a big freak-out level, if sea-rise models prove correct, the melting of the Western Antarctic ice sheet means calamitous results for the East Coast of the U.S., i.e., Washington, D.C., as Waterworld.) The climate tourists feel guilty but they will still visit if they can.

The potential damage tourism may cause to Antarctica’s fragile habitat troubles many environmentalists, who would like to see the number of tourists capped and the marketing of visitor rights to the highest bidder. Steve Wellmeier, IAATO’s executive director, disagrees. “We’re talking about a continent that is larger than Australia and we’re talking about a number of tourists that would fill a football stadium,” he told Reuters. “Seriously, is this a number for concern?”

Joanna Kakissis's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, among other publications. A contributor to the World Hum blog, she's currently a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder.